


carry my body back to the sea

by Qzil



Series: the ocean calls her home again [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Childhood Friends, Endgame Mary/John, F/M, Fantasy, First Love, Friends to Lovers, Interspecies Relationship(s), Light Angst, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Rare Pairings, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 10:08:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8140147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qzil/pseuds/Qzil
Summary: In which Mary Campbell meets and falls in love with a creature from the sea who can shed his seal skin to walk on land once every seven years.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bloodandcream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodandcream/gifts).



> This is a prequel that obviously takes place years before the events of 'she donned her skin and swam away' and 'she shed her skin to walk on land' but can easily be read as a standalone. 
> 
> Not completely accurate to traditional selkie myths, probably. 
> 
> Most specifically, this is for Christy, who's been begging for a part three. Welcome to rarepair Hell, my friend.

The sand is hot beneath her feet and the sweltering summer sun shines down on her as Mary Campbell runs across the beach, finally free of her mother’s watchful eye. Their village beside the sea is small, made up of mostly fishermen. Houses cling to the shoreline like barnacles to the side of a boat, and even further inland, where her family makes their home, the smell of salt clings to the air, rolling through the open windows.

She is seven years old and free from her mother for the first time. There is no danger where they live. Or at least, there is no danger outside of the wild animals that roam the small forest that sits just outside the reach of the sand or the creatures that dwell under the waves. As long as Mary promises to stay out of the ocean, her mother allows her to run freely with the other children. So Mary goes, stripping off her boots and racing along the sand, ignoring how it burns her feet.

Ignoring her mother’s warnings, Mary ventures close to the ocean. The crystal blue waves roll over her feet, foam bubbling around her ankles. Her feet sink deeper into the sand as the ocean kisses the shoreline again and again, small shells and strings of seaweed dancing in the water and swirling around her legs.

Mary bends, the hem of her dress brushing the waves, and scoops up a handful of treasures. Some of the shells are no larger than her fingernails while others nearly take up her whole palm. She turns them over and over in her hand and watches the light play off the damp objects.

“You can string those into a necklace, you know,” says a male voice.

She drops her shells in surprise as her head jerks up to find the source of the voice. When she looks out into the ocean, she spots a boy bobbing in the waves, barely keeping his head above water. He looks older than her, although not by much, with a head of fair hair slightly darker than her own sun-kissed locks.

The boy smiles at her and moves closer, but does not emerge from the ocean. Rooted to the spot, Mary freezes when she sees that his teeth are pointed and his eyes are bright yellow like the sun. Her heart pounds in her chest and her legs tremble, and she knows that she should run, turn around and go back to the other children or her mother and leave this strange boy that she’s never seen before.

Instead, she crosses her arms and frowns. “You made me drop my shells.”

“I can get you more,” the boy promises. “You can make necklaces out of them. Or wind chimes.”

“Who are you?” Mary asks. “I know everyone here. But I don’t know you.”

“I’m not from here,” the boy says.

“Then where are you from?”

The boy gestures to the ocean. “Here. There. Everywhere. Wherever I want.”

Mary’s frown deeps. “You can’t live in the ocean.”

“Well, why not?” the boy asks. Mary huffs and rolls her eyes.

“Because you’d _drown,_ of course. Humans can’t breathe underwater.”

The boy hums. “Humans can’t. I can.”

Mary narrows her eyes at him. “You’re weird.”

The boy shrugs. “Wanna swim with me?”

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Azazel,” he offers.

“I’m Mary,” she tells him. “I can’t swim yet. My mother says I’m not to go into the ocean. I could drown. Or get eaten.”

“Nothing will hurt you,” Azazel promises. “I’ll even teach you how to swim.”

Mary hesitates and begins to take a step back when Azazel holds his hand out to her. She notices that his skin is pale as milk, as if it has never seen the sun, and shimmers strangely, looking more like the shells she’d dropped than human skin. He wiggles his fingers invitingly.

Mary takes a step forward into the ocean, and then another, and slowly slips her fingers into his. His skin feels strange, almost rubbery, and is cold like the deep ocean. She almost recoils from his touch, but only shivers.

“That will pass,” Azazel promises. “Now, come on. It’s easy. The ocean won’t hurt you.”

Mary lets Azazel tug her into the sea until her feet can no longer touch the bottom. She kicks ineffectually, failing with panic, but Azazel keeps a firm hold on her hand and slowly tugs her back and forth, instructing her on how to kick. Within the hour, she can move on her own, although her strokes are clumsy.

Azazel moves through the water as if he was born there, all graceful movements and powerful strokes. He looks entirely inhuman as he dives under the waves and stays there so long that she’s half afraid he’s drowned. When he emerges, his hands are full of shells, some broken and some whole, all of them different shapes and sizes and colors.

“If you bring me some leather or twine, I can make a necklace for you,” he says. Mary smiles at him as she takes the shells.

“I can come out and play again tomorrow,” she says. “I should go home soon. It’s nearly sunset.”

“I’ll meet you here,” Azazel promises. Mary heads for shore and shivers when she emerges from the sea. Water clings to her dress, making it heavy, and drips from the ends of her long, blonde hair to dot the sand. She bends to retrieve her boots and turns to wave goodbye to Azazel, only to see that he has vanished.

She doesn’t tell her parents about her day. Thankfully, the waning sun dries her before she returns home, so they do not ask questions. Instead, she stores the shells in her bedside table and falls asleep with a smile on her face as the smell of the sea rolls in through her windows.

.

She meets Azazel on the beach the next day. The boy wears nothing except a ratty pair of trousers that only reach his knees. The hem is coming undone on one of the legs, and they’re full of patches. In contrast, Mary is impeccably dressed in a white, ruffled dress that falls to her calves and her hair neatly braided into pigtails.

“I brought cord,” she says when she sees him. “You said you’d show me how to make a necklace.”

Azazel pats the sand next to him. Mary sits and pulls the cording and shells out of her pocket, neatly lining them up on the sand. Azazel begins to hum a strange tune as he gently coaxes the cording through the shells that already have holes in them. Mary watches his fingers as he works. His skin is less pale than it was the day before, and his fingernails are bitten down to stubs. Still, his fingers move as gracefully as he swam through the water the day before, and in no time at all she has a necklace strung with shells.

“Come here,” Azazel says softly. “I’ll put it on you.”

Mary turns around. Azazel drapes the necklace over her head and neatly ties it behind her neck. The large scallop in the center sits neatly on her chest, and the smaller, glittering shells surrounding it clack together softly when she turns.

“Thank you.”

“Of course.”

“How old are you?” Mary asks, because she must. He looks like he isn’t much older than her, but moves as if he is, his steps graceful and fluid.

“How old do I look?” he asks. Mary tilts her head.

“Ten? Eleven?” she guesses.

“Then I’m eleven,” he tell her. “I think. We don’t really keep time like you do.”

“You talk weird,” Mary declares. “Like you’re not a _person.”_

“I’m not,” Azazel tells her. “I’m a selkie.”

Mary snorts. “Stop teasing me.”

“It’s true,” Azazel insists.

“Selkies are a fairy tale,” Mary says.

Azazel smiles. “It’s true. You’ll see in a few days, when I have to go back to the ocean. I’ll show you.”

Mary simply shakes her head. Her mother has always told her that little boys tease little girls. That’s just the way they work.

“Do you want to go swimming again?” Mary asks.

“You live here,” Azazel says. “Can you show me the forest? I’ve never seen one.”

Mary stands, brushes the sand from her skirt, and holds out her hand for his. “I can show you.”

Azazel takes her hand and allows her to pull him to his feet. Hand in hand, they run for the stand of trees, the ground slowly changing from sand to grass.

They spend the day wandering through the forest, picking fruit from the trees and flowers from the ground. Laughing, Mary shows Azazel how to weave the flowers into crowns and places one on each of their heads.

Later, back at home, she hides the necklace of shells under her dress and presses one of the flowers between the pages of the Bible her mother had given her for her birthday.

.

They meet the next day at the edge of the forest. Azazel is still in his ratty trousers and his feet are coated with dirt and sand.

“I have never climbed a tree before,” he tells her.

“It’s easy,” Mary promises. “Come on. You taught me to swim, so I’ll teach you this. Fair’s fair.”

Azazel smiles and copies her movements as Mary effortlessly pulls herself up the branches. It is the heart of summer, so the leaves are thick and lush, blocking out their view of the world until they reach the topmost branches.

Mary pulls herself up and perches as high as she can, the branches easily bearing her weight. Azazel wobbles uncertainly next to her, eyes wide with fear.

“What if the branches break?” he asks.

“We die,” Mary says cheerfully. “But look at this view, Azazel! You can see all the way to the horizon!”

“It is very pretty,” Azazel agrees, gazing out across the ocean with longing written on his face. “But I wanna get down now.”

Mary laughs, swings her legs back over the branch, and guides him down.

.

“I have to go home tonight,” Azazel says several days later. The two of them sit on the beach, basking in the sun. “I can feel the ocean calling me.”

“When are you going to come back?” Mary asks.

“I can’t come back for another seven years,” Azazel tells her. “I can only be human for a little while.”

Mary snorts. “Okay. Sure. Where are you going? Back to your family? I never asked who you’re related to here.”

“I just told you, I’m going back to the ocean,” he repeats.

“Prove it,” Mary challenges.

Azazel stands. “Okay. Come with me.”

The two of them walk down the beach until the village is no longer in sight and the cliffs on the other side of the shore loom over their heads. Without hesitating, Azazel plunges into the water. Mary follows, moving gracefully through the water after several days of practice, and lets Azazel lead her into a small cave. It’s barely large enough for both of them to stand in, and dark. She stands there, shivering, and watches as Azazel roots around until he finds whatever he is looking for and makes his way back to her.

“Take this,” he orders, shoving something furry and soft into her hands. “I’ll put it on when we’re back on the beach.”

It is harder to swim with the object in her hands, and Mary struggles to make it back onto the beach. When she reaches shore again, blinking in the sunlight, she sees that Azazel has handed her a seal pelt. The dark gray fur is soft, even while wet, and when she looks closer she can see spots marking the pelt.

“You’re really a selkie,” she breathes when he emerges from the sea.

“Yeah. That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Azazel says, gently taking his skin back from her. “I have to go now. But I’ll be back.”

“You said seven years,” Mary reminds him. “Why seven years? Why not come back sooner?”

“I don’t know,” Azazel confesses. “That’s just what my mother told me.”

“But I want to know--”

Azazel shushes her. “Next time, I’ll tell you everything.”

“Promise me,” Mary demands. “Promise you’ll come back and see me. I want to hear _everything_ about living in the ocean.”

“I promise,” Azazel says. On impulse, Mary lifts herself onto her toes and presses a kiss to his cheek.

“Well, goodbye,” she says afterward. Azazel blinks at her and touches his face.

“Goodbye,” he echoes, and then turns toward the water. Mary watches as he throws the seal skin around his shoulders. There is a flash of light, and a strange smell rolls over her, sharp like pine needles after a rainstorm, and her friend is gone, replaced with a seal. He lumbers toward the water and disappears into the waves without looking back.

.

Her days pass quickly, after that. She makes friends in the village, girls and boys that she swims with and plays in the streets with. Her mother teaches her to sew and clean and cook and she tries to push Azazel to the back of her mind. He is a childhood fantasy, after all, and the older she gets, the more Mary is half-convinced that she dreamed his transformation. That he was nothing more than a young boy running away from home that pulled a clever trick on her and decided to return to wherever he had come from.

Still, she keeps the shell necklace he’d made her tucked close to her heart, never allowing it out of her sight for more than a few minutes on the rare occasions she takes it off.

She gets her first blood the year she turns fourteen, wakes up to red stained sheets and her mother proudly declaring her a woman. It is both a blessing and a curse. Her mother gives her more responsibility, but also watches her like a hawk, telling her that childhood is over and she is not to go anywhere with her male friends unescorted.

Mary does not argue. She simply tells her mother that she will listen and escapes to the sea instead. She spends hours moving through the water, collecting shells and dead bits of coral and storing them in the little cave Azazel showed her years ago. She thinks that she moves through the water almost as gracefully as him now, easily cutting through the waves.

She wakes one morning to find a piece of paper tucked into the shell wind chimes hanging from her window. Curious, she folds it open across her knee and smiles when she sees the writing.

_Meet me at the cave. I have a lot to tell you. --Az._

Smiling, Mary holds the piece of paper close to her chest and rises to open her wardrobe. She chooses a light blue dress to compliment her eyes and ties her hair back with a matching ribbon. Before she leaves, she looks at her reflection in the polished bronze mirror her father had given her for her thirteenth birthday and, satisfied, rushes out the door, shouting back at her mother that she is going for a walk.

She kicks off her boots as soon as she reaches the beach, carrying them in one hand as she runs down the shore, scattering birds as she goes. The seagulls screech at her angrily, but she ignores them, throwing her shoes into the sand and diving into the ocean as soon as she reaches the cliffs. The waves are rough, and cold, but she moves almost effortlessly through the water. When she reaches the entrance to the cave, she can already see a fire burning inside and see a shadow moving next to it, and her heart begins to pound in excitement.

“Az!” she shouts, clinging to a rock and waving. Her friend turns and waves back, gesturing for her to come closer, and Mary doesn’t hesitate. She throws herself back into the water and fights the tide until she slips inside the cave. Azazel comes into the sea to meet her, the two of them laughing as he pulls her into a hug and whirls her around. Water splashes from her hair and dress, sprinkling the walls around them.

“It’s good to see you,” Mary breathes when he puts her down in the gritty sand. The tide has stolen the ribbon from her hair, leaving it lose around her shoulders in soaked tendrils. His skin is once again pale as milk, having gone without seeing the sun for seven years, but he has grown as much as she has. He is even taller than her now, and his fair hair is shorter than it was when he was a child. Still, he wears another pair of ratty pants that must have been stolen from a clothesline and are too small for him, the ragged hem only going a little past his knees. Now older, his arms and chest and back are well muscled, shaped from years of moving through the water.

“It’s good to see you, too,” he says. He reaches toward the bodice of her dress and gingerly fingers her seashell necklace. “You kept it.”

“Of course I did,” Mary says. “It reminded me that you were real. Not just some fantasy I made up.”

“Well, I’m real, and I have so much to tell you,” Azazel says. He takes her hand and pulls her further into the cave. Mary sits with him on one of the natural rises, keeping her hand locked with his, and leans forward eagerly as he tells her about his adventures under the ocean. They sit for hours, Azazel telling her about seeing sharks and dolphins and whales and coral reefs and kelp forests. Mary only goes to move when she realizes that noon as passed.

“I need to go,” she says hurriedly. “I told my mother I was going for a walk.”

Azazel frowns. “But we haven’t talked about you yet.”

“My mother will be wondering where I am.”

“Does she not let you out anymore?” he asks.

“She’s just worried about me because I’m a woman now, and I have to start taking on responsibility,” Mary says. “You know, household stuff. She doesn’t want me out with a boy unchaperoned.”

“That’s stupid,” Azazel says. “Where I come from, everyone is always together, but if two of us want to go out by ourselves, there is no shame in it.”

“It’s different for humans,” Mary says awkwardly. “But I have to go, or she’ll get suspicious.”

“Come back later,” Azazel requests. “Sneak out, if you can.”

“I will,” Mary promises without thinking. “I’ll meet you by the edge of the woods after they go to sleep.”

This time, Azazel is the one to lean down and press a kiss to her cheek. Mary feels herself blushing, and is grateful for the dim lighting in the cave.

“Take this with you,” Azazel tells her, pressing his seal skin into her hands. “Hide it for me.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you later,” he promises. “See you tonight.”

“See you tonight,” Mary says, and slips back into the water. The walk home mostly dries her off, and she barely manages to stash Azazel’s skin under her bed before her mother calls her to come do her chores, angry that her daughter has been gone so long. Mary tries to seem apologetic, keeping her head down as she goes about her day.

The minute she hears her parent’s door shut, she slips out of bed and carefully climbs out her window. She sticks to the shadows as she heads toward the woods at the edge of the village. There are still people out, coming and going from the local pub or visiting friends, and she does not want to be seen.

The moon hangs high in the sky by the time she reaches her destination, yet she still feels wide awake, heart pounding with excitement and happiness and palms sweaty with nerves. Azazel is at least eighteen now, a man grown, and despite her recent womanhood, Mary still feels half a child compared to him.

“Mary, over here!” Azazel calls. She creeps deeper into the trees and finds him sitting on a fallen log, two apples in his hands. He pats the spot next to her, and offers her one when she sits.

“Thanks,” she says as she takes it. Dinner had been a lean affair, a thin soup made of vegetables from the garden, and her stomach still rumbles with hunger.

“This is one of the things I miss about living on land,” he tells her. “The food. Not that I don’t like fish, because I do, but we don’t have fruit like this under the water.”

“If you’re only eighteen, then how do you know so much about living on land?” Mary asks. “You’ve only shed your skin once, mathematically.”

“I lived on land until I was seven years old,” Azazel tells her. “The last time I met you, it was the first time I shed my skin. I guess my first run being human didn’t count, since I was born on land.”

“I don’t understand,” Mary says. Azazel sighs and tosses aside the core of his apple.

“My mother and father were selkies,” Azazel begins. “When my mother was pregnant with me, she shed her skin to obtain some human food. I believe it was actually apples. A human man fell in love with her and hid her skin so she would stay with him and be his wife. We need them to go back to the sea, you understand. Without them, we are trapped in human form. They fell in love, after a time, and had several more human children. My mother eventually discovered where my stepfather had hidden her skin. Instead of going back to the ocean herself, she wrapped me in it and sent me on my way. I found my grandparents, and they took me in.”

“That’s terrible,” Mary says softly. Azazel shrugs.

“It is. But she made her choice to stay with her human children, and I believed that she loved her human, in her own way. And it shows tremendous strength. They say that neither chains of love nor chains of iron can keep us from the sea. It is in our blood.”

“Then why give me your skin?” Mary asks.

“You would give it back to me, if I asked for it,” Azazel tells her. “And if I do not know where it is, I cannot be tempted by it. I will be able to stay on land for as long as I wish.”

“What if I didn’t give it back to you? What if I kept it and made you marry me?” Mary teases.

“Well, our children wouldn’t have very good hair, I can tell you that,” Azazel says, rubbing his own head. “Mine’s already starting to prematurely fall out. But you would never do that, I don’t think. Force someone to stay.”

“You’re right. I wouldn’t,” Mary agrees. They sit in silence for a few more minutes as Mary finishes her apple. “Did you ever see your mom again?”

“I watched her sometimes, when I was a seal,” he tells her. “She died a year or two ago, I think. I sat and watched her cottage for a day and night, and saw my siblings playing on the beach. She did not appear, but my stepfather did. Whenever I visited, she always seemed to know, and would leave out fish for me to eat. The basket of fish did not appear, and I did not see her, so I can only assume the worst.”

“I’m sorry,” Mary says softly. Azazel shakes his head.

“I can only hope he buried her at sea,” he says. “I know humans bury their dead in the ground, but my kind belongs to the ocean. It would only be right of him to return her to her home.”

Mary rests her head on Azazel’s shoulder. “I hope he did, too.”

.

She’s tired the next day, more tired than she’s ever been in her life, having barely managed to climb back through her window before the sun came up. But Mary thinks that it’s entirely worth it to be stumbling through her chores half awake. She and Azazel had spent the night in the woods, climbing trees and talking about their seven years apart. There hadn’t been much on her end. Nothing ever changes in her small village, and Azazel knows no one there, anyway. But his stories had been full of wonder, of life under the sea and his family.

She returns to her bedroom after lunch to find another note tucked into her wind chime.

_Meet me at the beach. I’ll catch dinner. --Az._

She catches a quick afternoon nap and spends the rest of the day quivering in anticipation. Once her parents finally close their bedroom door, she once again slips out of her window and rushes toward the beach, stopping when she finds Azazel sitting near the cliff, a fire already lit and fish cooking over it.

“I figured you’d be hungry,” is all he says as Mary sits down next to him.

“How do you know where I live?” she asks. He shrugs, and looks into the fire.

“I followed you once. I just wanted to know.”

“That’s kind of creepy,” Mary says.

“Came in handy, didn’t it?”

This time, Mary shrugs. “I guess so. Where do you even sleep while you’re here?”

“The cave, mostly,” he confesses. “Sometimes in the woods. I like to be outside. I don’t think I could stay inside a human house again. It’s too confining.”

“Do you sleep under the stars when you’re a seal?”

“Every night. All of us gather with each other and sleep together. It can be cold if you’re alone, but the collective body heat makes you warm. We hunt together and live together. We’re different from normal seals, you see, where there’s one male and many females. With us, we stay in family groups. My grandmother and grandfather, my uncles and aunts and cousins and their children,” Azazel explains.

“Are there many of you?” Mary asks.

Azazel nods. “Not as many as their once were, but more than you’d think.”

“I only have my mother and father,” Mary tells him. “Everyone else is gone.”

“Well, now you’ve got another friend,” Azazel says. “The fish are done. Want to go for a swim afterward?”

“You know I do.”

.

She meets Azazel on the beach every night for the rest of the week, barely managing to keep her mother from getting too suspicious and barely managing to stay awake enough to get her chores done. She finds herself humming absently while she works, recounting she and Azazel’s conversations in her mind. She finds herself picturing his smile and the way his rough, calloused hands look when they light a fire.

After her chores, she returns to her room to find another note tucked into her wind chime.

_Bring my skin, if you can. --Az_

Fighting back tears, Mary swallows hard. She knows he has to leave again, has to return to the ocean and his people, and knows he will not be back for another seven years, if he chooses to return to her little village at all. She will truly be a woman grown by then, maybe even married with her own children, and will have no time for him or their games.

Still, she cannot keep his skin, cannot trap him on land. He belongs to the sea, not to her.

That night, she pulls his skin out from under her thin mattress and sits on the bed, holding it in her hands. The fur is velvet soft, as always, and warm under her touch. It is hard to climb out the window holding it, and she does not want to throw it onto the ground as she clambers through it, so instead she wraps the seal pelt around her shoulders. The head of it fits neatly over her own, falling over her eyes and nearly obscuring her vision, while the front paws dangle over her shoulders.

She feels wonderfully warm wrapped up in it, and despite the skin’s time hidden under her bed, it still smells like the sea. She breathes the smell in deep and holds it in her lungs. Azazel always smells like the sea, no matter what form he’s in, and his touch is almost always as cold as the deep ocean.

The pelt makes her feel closer to him, so she keeps it wrapped around her as she walks to meet him on the beach, her steps heavy and slow. He is leaving soon, possibly tonight, and it is the last time she will be able to see him, the last time she will be able to sit with him by the fire or swim with him under the moonlight and talk about their lives.

He is waiting for her by the cliff, as he always is, with a fire freshly lit. He smiles when he sees her, his strange, yellow eyes twinkling with happiness.

“You look like a selkie maid,” he tells her when she reaches the fire, her boots dangling from one hand. “Like you’re about to transform and slip away into the sea any second.”

“I wish I was,” she blurts. “I wish I could go with you.”

“I wish you could, too,” Azazel says. “I wish you could come with me and see all the ocean has to offer.”

Mary unwraps his skin from around herself and shyly holds it over the fire. “Here.”

“Be careful with that,” Azazel chides as he takes the skin from her hands, making sure it doesn’t touch the fire. “If you burn it, I’ll be stuck on land forever.”

_Would that be so bad?_ Mary wants to ask. But she keeps her mouth shut. It would be, she thinks, for him to be stuck on land, unable to return to his family and the ocean. Instead, she sinks down on the other side of the fire and asks, “Will you leave tonight?”

“Perhaps tomorrow or the next day,” Azazel answers. “I can feel the ocean calling me.”

“Are you going to come back?” Mary asks. “Seven years is a long time. I may be married by then. I might have children of my own.”

Azazel shrugs. “I will come back. Seven years is not such a long time. Even if you are married, we will still be able to see each other. We’re friends, remember?”

Mary stays silent. Yes, Azazel is her friend, but she doubts any prospective husband would understand her connection to him, or believe her if she told them the truth.

“Come. Swim with me,” Azazel continues. He stands, leaving his seal skin on the beach. Mary follows him into the water, shrugging out of her dress and standing there only in her chemise and petticoat so she will have something dry to put on later. Azazel does not comment, unconcerned with human concepts such as underwear and nudity, and she does not feel shy around him. She’s known him since childhood, after all.

The ocean is calm as they move through the waves, the two of them gliding gracefully through the water. Mary feels almost weightless there, wrapped in the ocean’s calm embrace, and turns to see Azazel watching her with a strange expression on his face.

“Not a selkie maid,” he finally says. “Something older than that. A water nymph. You belong here, in the sea.”

He swims to her and takes her hands in his. Her chemise is soaked through and clings to her body like a second skin, and she knows that it is nearly see through in the moonlight. Still, she does not care, and squeezes his fingers between her own. Azazel lowers his face to hers until their foreheads are touching, and Mary feels her heart begin to pound in her chest at being so close to him. The ocean sighs softly all around them, and she can hear the quiet sounds of the animals in the forest in the distance, but her eyes stay locked with his.

“Wait for me,” he whispers. “I will come back.”

Then he kisses her.

His lips are soft, and wet with seawater, and taste like salt and fish and are as cold as the rest of him, as cold as the deepest parts of the ocean. It’s quick and chaste, a simple press of lips together in the moonlight, but it sets Mary’s heart fluttering all the same. When Azazel pulls away from her, his yellow eyes are shining.

“Wait for me,” he repeats.

“I will,” Mary promises.

They walk back to the shore hand in hand and eat their fish, Azazel’s seal skin resting a few feet away. When they are finished, he puts more wood on the fire and lies on his back to look up at the stars.

“Do you have to go back home?” he asks.

Mary hesitates, looking back toward the village, and shakes her head.

“I can stay a little longer,” she says, and lies down next to him. He drags his skin over to use as a pillow, and the two of them lay there, looking up at the sky. Azazel loops and arm around her shoulders and pulls her close until her head is pillowed on his bare chest. She does not intend to fall asleep, yet she finds herself drifting.

She wakes just before sunrise, shivering in the cold air. The fire is out; nothing left behind but ash and blackened bits of wood. Azazel sighs softly, his chest rising and falling under her head, and she can hear his heart beating steadily in her ear. She only moves when she feels him stir, sitting up enough to look down into his eyes.

“Don’t go,” she says. “Stay here. With me.”

“I have to go,” he tells her. “I can’t stay. But I will come back.”

She leans down and kisses him again. His breath is sour with sleep, but behind that there is still the taste and smell of the ocean. He kisses her back, fingers tangling in her long, blonde hair, and pulls away.

“I will come back,” he promises. The sun begins to peek over the horizon, spreading pinks and yellows across the sky. “See you soon.”

“Be safe,” Mary says. “I love you, Az. You’re my best friend.”

Instead of answering, he simply presses a light kiss to her forehead and then stands to gather up his skin. Mary remains sitting on the beach even as he walks to the edge of the water and wraps his second skin around himself. Like before, there is a flash of light, and then her friend is gone, once again in his true form.

She only moves when he disappears into the surf. Trembling, she pulls her dress over her head, finds her boots, and heads for home.

.

She is sixteen when John Winchester shows up at her front door with a bouquet of wildflowers and a smile on his face.

John is everything Azazel isn’t; dark haired and brown eyed and fully, entirely human. But his smile is warm and almost shy, so Mary takes his flowers and invites him into the house for tea at her mother’s insistence.

His visit lasts all of an hour, but by the end of it Mary is smiling and laughing in a way she hasn’t since her selkie returned to the sea. Her mother is smiling, too, giving her daughter a knowing look as she rises to escort John to the front door.

“He is a good man,” Deanna Campbell says when Mary returns. “It is time for you to meet one.”

Mary opens her mouth to reply that she’s already met a good man, but closes it immediately. She has never told her mother about Azazel, and knows that she never will. He is her secret to keep, her closest friend from childhood despite their limited time together, and she knows her mother will not understand. Instead, she simply smiles.

“John is a good man,” Mary agrees. He is, as far as she knows. John is an orphan, apprenticed to the local carpenter, and skilled in his work. Her mother’s eyes gleam brightly, and Mary can almost sense the word _marriage_ hanging in the air.

But she had promised Azazel she would wait for him, so she excuses herself to go about her chores. John is a good man, and honest man, and a loving man, but he is not her selkie.

.

She is almost seventeen when the worst day of her life happens.

Later, the villagers will say that it was a freak accident. But all it takes is one violent storm, one misplaced tree, and one strong gust of wind and Mary Campbell’s life is changed forever.

Her parents are dead and she is alone.

She buries them in the small cemetery and heads back to her half destroyed home where the local women have brought her food and blankets. The storm had only destroyed the left side of her house, where her parent’s bedroom was. The tree that had fallen on them still sits where the local men rolled it out of the way, the trunk too heavy to be moved completely without breaking it down with axes.

She still uses her front door and closes it behind her before she settles at the small kitchen table. Her parents had been asleep when it happened, as had she, and she hopes they felt no pain.

A knock on the door sets her rising again. When she opens it, John is standing there, fist poised to knock again.

“Do you need help cleaning up?” he asks. Mary only stares at him. He’s had tea at her house half a dozen times in the last year, and the two of them have gone on a few outings together, Mary mostly going to placate her mother, but it has never gone further than that.

She stares at him for a few moments, and then swallows. “Yeah. I do.”

.

John returns to her home every day after that, always bringing tools with him. Together, they break down the tree that destroyed her home and chop it into planks to rebuild the bedroom and pieces to use for firewood. At first, neither of them talk while they work, too focused on the task at hand. Mary is grateful to have the work. It is a good distraction from the reality around her.

She is a woman alone with no relatives or husband to protect her, with no way to make her own path in the world. She can sew and cook and clean and maybe find employment at their village’s one small inn, or else seek work elsewhere. But she knows the road is dangerous for a woman traveling alone.

And Azazel will be back. He promised her that he would return to her small fishing village at the edge of the sea. She cannot simply vanish without telling him where she has gone.

Slowly, she begins to talk to John. He is there every day with a smile on his face and a joke on his lips. He teases her, makes her laugh as he gently tugs at her braid or tells an amusing story from a job, and at the end of the day, she finds herself sad to see him return home.

Together, they raise new walls and build new furniture as the seasons change around them, and Mary almost dreads the day when the project will be finished and he will have no excuse to visit her. He is good company, and kind.

It is just after her eighteenth birthday when the house is finished and the two of them sit at her kitchen table, eating the soup she’d made, when John reaches out to take her hand and twines their fingers together.

“I want to marry you one day,” he says to her. Mary drops her spoon into her soup in surprise, but finds a smile stretching across her face.

“Me, too,” she blurts. Because she can’t imagine being in the house without him, cannot imagine being alone.

That night, she lies in bed and draws her seashell necklace out from where it sits tucked closer to her heart. She clutches the scallop, sighs, and then draws it up over her head to place it on her nightstand.

She is a woman grown now, and engaged, and Azazel and his kind are part of her childhood, fairytales that must be put to bed.

She does not love John, not yet, but she knows that she will. He is good and kind and she wants him, wants to spend her days laughing and working beside him and her nights by his side in her bed, wants to build a life with him, wants to love him.

Azazel could never be part of that life. He belongs to his people, to the ocean and all its mysteries. Not on land, and not with her.

.

Mary hopes for a short engagement, that she and John will be married as soon as they can. But, of course, nothing ever goes as planned. Their small village has no priest, and they must wait for the traveling one to make his yearly journey to their town. Then, of course, there is a war on, and the king that sits in his castle far from their little fishing village sends his soldiers throughout the countryside to recruit any young men that they can for the cause. John is willing, able, and signs up for the king’s navy as soon as the soldiers come into town.

“It will only be a little while,” John promises. “I will come back to you.”

“You better,” Mary tells him. She stands with the other women that have husbands or sweethearts going off to fight as they watch their men go, knowing that most of them will not come back, and prays that John will keep his promise.

.

John sends letters. They’re sporadic at best, with months between each one, but she supposes that slow post is to be expected with the war. She does not even know who they’re fighting, exactly, having never gone beyond the boarder of their small fishing village, but it does not matter. All that matters is that each letter means that John is alive, and fighting, that is good enough for her.

Time passes slowly, as it always does, and with each passing day she finds herself growing more and more lonely. She has a few friends in the village, the wives of other men that have gone off to fight and girls that she grew up with, but even they cannot chase away the loneness of her nights.

She keeps all of John’s letters to her, reading each one over and over by candlelight when the loneliness grows too great, and dreads the day when they stop coming altogether.

In the weeks leading up to her twenty first birthday, Mary begins, unconsciously, to look out toward the sea. Both her men had promised they’d return to her, but only one of them had given her a concreate date. She knows that soon Azazel will shed his skin to walk on land once again, and that he will come and see her.

Despite her promise to put him aside, Mary still feels herself blush at the thought of him, and feels fluttering in her belly when she recalls those chaste, childhood kisses under the moonlight.

.

A week after her twenty first birthday, Mary wakes to the sound of her wind chimes twinkling in the breeze. As always, she rises to check them for any notes, and feels her face break out in a smile when she sees a slip of paper tucked between two shells.

_The usual spot. Whenever you can. --Az._

He’s here, just as he promised her, and this time, she does not have to sneak out in the middle of the night to see him.

Smiling, Mary dresses as quickly as she can. Without thinking about it, she draws her seashell necklace from its hiding place in her nightstand drawer and pulls it over her head. Despite her plans to put Azazel in her past, he is still her friend, and she feels the old excitement at meeting him flowing through her.

There are few people out so early in the morning. The sky is clear, and the ocean is calm, and to her it looks like a perfect summer day, warm and still. The sand is hot under her bare feet, so she walks in the water instead, gratefully throwing herself into the ocean’s cool embrace when she reaches the cliff. She cuts through the waves easily as she swims toward the cave, the ocean eerily still around her.

She sees Azazel sitting on a rock near the entrance, water dripping from his trousers. He is nearly bald now, most of the hair on the top of his head gone with only a few short strands of it clinging to the sides of his scalp, and he has grown thicker with age, but his eyes are still the strange, shining yellow she first saw all those years ago.

They light up with happiness when they see her, and Mary feels her heart beat faster in her chest when he smiles down at her with pointed teeth.

She swims to the rock and clings to it, returning his smile. “Hey, Az.”

“Come up,” he says. Mary hauls herself from the ocean and begins to climb to meet him. Her dress, soaked with seawater, clings to her like a second skin, and the rocks are slippery under her touch. But she has made this climb half a hundred times, so it takes no time at all to reach the top of the little lookout rock.

Azazel wraps his arms around her the moment she is sitting by his side. She returns the embrace and breathes in the smell of him, all seawater and fish, and she can feel him doing the same to her, pressing his nose into her hair and inhaling.

For a moment, all thoughts of John are forgotten, and it is just her and her selkie, together, the only two people on Earth.

“I missed you,” he murmurs against her neck. “I have so much to tell you.”

Mary slowly pulls away from him. Azazel runs his hands down her arms and twines their fingers together.

“I have a lot to tell you, too,” she says. “A lot happened while you were away.”

A breeze stirs the air, making her shiver. Azazel’s eyes soften. “We can talk in the cave. Come on.”

He leaps into the water before she can answer, landing with a loud splash. Mary waits for him to surface before she follows. The air inside the cave feels damp, even when Azazel lights a small fire, and Mary continues to shiver until Azazel picks up his seal skin and drapes it around her shoulders.

Wrapped in his other skin, she feels safe and warm, and leans forward eagerly to hear him speak.

“I have a son,” he announces. “Tom.”

“Not a sea name,” Mary observes, her heart sinking in her chest. It has been seven years, and she has moved on, promised herself in marriage to another, and should not feel jealousy at the fact that he has done the same.

“No,” he says. “She balked at that tradition. Her father was human, you see, and she wanted to name the boy after him.”

“When did you marry?” Mary asks. Azazel tils his head at her, eyes narrowed.

“I didn’t. She wanted a child and found me an acceptable mate. I consented.”

Mary swallows hard. “You make it sound so impersonal. Fathering a child.”

“It was, with her. She feels the same for me. She is happy with Tom, and wishes for me to take no part in raising him, beyond what is expected of me by the family. It is different, where I come from,” Azazel explains. “But tell me of you. What has happened since I saw you last?”

Mary squeezes her eyes shut. “My parents are dead. An accident.”

“I’m sorry, Mary.”

She shrugs. “Thank you. It happened years ago. I’m…better, than I was.”

“Had I known you were alone, I would not have bothered with the note. I simply would have knocked on your door when I shed my skin last night.”

“It’s best you didn’t,” Mary tells him. “Someone might have seen. I’m…I’m engaged. To be married. To be alone with a different man, so late at night…”

“Congratulations,” Azazel says dryly. Mary opens her eyes to see him staring at her, a blank expression on his face. “What are you going to tell him when he asks where you were today?”

“He won’t,” Mary says. “He’s away right now. He’s fighting in the war.”

“How fortunate for me,” Azazel says.

“Stop that,” Mary snaps. “I would have come and seen you, anyway. You’re my friend. You know that.”

They stare at each other over the fire for a few moments, with only the soft sounds of the ocean and the crackling of wood between them. Finally, Azazel sighs.

“Yes. We’re old friends.”

“Come back to the house with me,” Mary blurts. “I’ll cook you something to eat. You can sleep in a bed for as long as you’re here, instead of in this cave.”

“And what will you tell people if they see us together?” Azazel asks.

“The truth,” Mary tells him. “That you’re an old friend, come for a visit.”

Azazel’s lips twitch. “Alright.”

Mary stands and goes to take his seal skin off, intending to leave it behind, but Azazel holds up his hand to stop her.

“I might need it,” he says. “I would like you to carry it, though. So I do not transform.”

She presses her lips together, but does as she is told, keeping it firmly wrapped around her body as they plunge into the ocean. She even keeps it on her as they walk down the beach, Azazel pressed as close to her side as he can get without touching her. As always, she feels a familiar calmness settle over her when she is near him. Even though he’s changed in the last seven years, everything about him still feels familiar to her, from his smell to the way he walks.

His hand brushes against hers once, then twice, before she finally takes it and twines their fingers together. Neither of them say anything, even when they reach her house and he is forced to let go as she moves to put the kettle on for tea.

She drapes his skin across a chair, being careful not to drop it on the floor, and runs her hand over the velvety fur as she turns toward the stove. Azazel simply watches her, yellow eyes boring into her back, and silently accepts his mug of tea.

“Tell me everything else,” Mary requests. “Tell me about Tom. How old is he now? Did you know his mother long? Tell me what you’ve seen since you left.”

Azazel smiles, sets down his mug, and tells her.

.

The next few days are awkward. Azazel sleeps in the spare bedroom, only a few feet away from her, and always wakes with the dawn. Mary stumbles into her kitchen in the mornings to find fresh caught fish and fresh picked fruit on the table and her selkie readying breakfast. They don’t talk much, and when they do the conversation is light, almost superficial. Azazel talks about the sights he’s seen during his seven years at sea. Mary tells him about how she and John rebuilt the house after the accident.

Still, it’s quiet, far too quiet for Mary’s liking. Most nights, they simply stare at each other over their dinners, and Mary thinks that it’s a shame, that this is how their friendship will end.

“Walk with me,” Azazel says on the fourth night. “C’mon. Let’s go for a walk.”

“Beach?” Mary suggests. Azazel shakes his head.

“No. Woods. Bring my skin. I don’t…I don’t want to look at it. It’s too tempting, right now. We’ll stash it up in a tree.”

“Alright,” Mary agrees. She picks up the skin and goes to drape it over her arm, but Azazel takes it from her hands and wraps it about her shoulders instead. Smiling, he draws the head up over her own.

“I meant what I said,” he tells her. “You do look like a selkie maid. Like the first selkie maid, from our stories.”

“Tell me,” Mary requests as they leave the house. Azazel keeps a respectable distance from her as they walk, not even allowing their hands to brush.

“There’s a story that we tell our children. A bedtime tale, really. It’s said that the first selkie was a woman who fell in love with a seal, and wished to go into the ocean to be with him. But she could not, or she would drown. The ancient god of the sea offered to make her a seal, so she could be with her beloved, but she was torn, because half her heart belonged to her family on land,” Azazel explains. “So the sea god made it so she could shed her skin every seven years and become human once again, so she could see her family. All her children and her children’s children were born with the gift, they say. That’s why we can become human, but only for a short time.”

Mary gently strokes the fur around her shoulders. “That’s a lovely story.”

“It is,” he agrees. They reach the edge of the woods and Azazel finally takes her hand. Mary lets him, twining their fingers together as they walk. His skin still feels strange, almost rubbery, and his hands are entirely different from John’s. While his hands are calloused and scarred from years of hard labor, Azazel’s are smooth, having hardly been used for anything at all. His touch is still cold, like the deep ocean, but it is familiar to her.

It’s quiet under the trees, and cooler. Sunlight plays through the branches, dappling the forest floor. The birds and small animals that inhabit the area are unusually silent, and Mary wonders if perhaps they can sense that Azazel is something mystical that they should run from. But her selkie does not say anything, so she does not ask.

He keeps his grip on her hand as they travel down familiar paths that she has known since childhood. The carpet of dead leaves and fallen pine needles muffle their footsteps as they move, until the only thing Mary can hear is Azazel’s breathing and her own heartbeat.

They are deep in the forest before Azazel stops moving and squints up at a tree. “That one has a hollow. Here should be good.”

“Are you sure you want to leave it here?” Mary asks. “How will you find it again?”

“I’ll know,” he promises. “My mother nearly tore apart our home, looking for hers. She seemed to sense that my stepfather had hidden it close to home, and she was right. She found it in the roof.”

Mary shudders and takes her hand from his grip. “Maybe you should go back.”

He turns to look at her, and Mary sees that his yellow eyes, usually warm and full of laughter, are cold and distant. “What did you say?”

“Maybe you should go back,” she repeats. “And stay there. We can’t--I can’t--Az, I’m engaged. You have a son. We kissed, the last time you were here, and you told me to wait for you, but I--I couldn’t. And you didn’t wait for me, either.”

“I did not marry, nor promise myself to anyone,” he says flatly. “Children out of wedlock are common, where I come from, and I told you I would come back. You could have waited for me.”

“I tried!” Mary shouts. “I tried to wait for you! John tried to court me, but I rebuffed him. I _tried,_ Az. But you weren’t here! John is good, and sweet, and kind, and he loves me. And he was here. He will be here. He won’t stay for a week and then leave me for seven years!”

She feels tears welling in her eyes and turns away from him, moving too fast for the seal skin to stay on her shoulders. It crumples to the ground, landing on the forest floor with a loud thump.

“I would have stayed,” Azazel says quietly. “If you would have asked, I would have stayed.”

“You don’t belong here,” Mary whispers. “You don’t.”

She feels him softly touch her shoulder. She turns to face him, and his thumbs brush her face, wiping away her tears.

“I love you,” he tells her. “My kind love easily and often, this is true, and every time I come on land, I fall in love with you again.”

Then he kisses her. His lips are wet and taste like salt, but are warm against her own, and Mary finds herself melting into his embrace. Heat floods her belly and moves downward as Azazel wraps his arms about her waist and pulls her closer. When he pulls away, he rests his forehead against her own, his breathing heavy.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “That I left you.”

“I knew you would,” Mary tells him. “You always will.”

“But I am here now,” Azazel continues. “We are both here now. Just the two of us.”

He kisses her again, and Mary kisses him back, allowing Azazel to lower her down on top of his discarded seal skin as he peppers her face and neck with quick, light kisses.

“Az, we can’t,” she whispers. “You have a son. I’m engaged. I love John. I can’t…”

“You love me, too,” he says. “And I am here now.”

“I do,” she tells him. “I’ve loved you since I was fourteen years old. But John--”

“He doesn’t matter now,” he tells her. “None of it matters now. There is no one here but us.”

This time, she is the one who kisses him and pulls him down on top of her. She allows Azazel to slot himself between her thighs, allows him to grind down against her so she can feel his desire swelling in his breeches, gasping at the feel of it. He runs his soft hands down her body until he can pull her skirt up past her thighs. His seal pelt is soft against her bare skin, and the feel of fur on the back of her thighs makes her shiver. He barely manages to kick his breeches away before he covers her again.

Mary gasps and squeezes her eyes shut when he enters her. Her mother had always told her that her first time with her husband would hurt a little, but it would get better. It does hurt, but the pain is less than she has been led to believe, and soon gives way to a strange, throbbing pleasure that has her throwing her head back against the velvet fur of his other skin.

Azazel presses small kisses to her neck and murmurs assurances into her ear as he moves, their bodies coming together again and again on the forest floor. Mary digs her fingers into the soft fur of his other skin and tries to keep her eyes open, locked on his. He stares back down at her, seemingly unblinking, sweat beading on his brow and his eyes studying her as if trying to memorize every inch of her face.

When it is over, he nearly collapses on top of her, breathing heavily with his weight supported on his elbows. Breathless, Mary stares up into the canopy of trees above her and waits for the world to right itself again and her brain to catch up to her body.

Oddly, she does not feel guilty about John. This is Azazel, her oldest friend and first love. It was meant to be, if only once. She knows that he will leave her again. That he will don his skin and slip into the sea and out of her life, perhaps for the final time.

“I love you,” she tells him.

He kisses her again. “I love you, too.”

Azazel helps her rise and gathers up his other skin. Her legs shake too badly for her to go far, adrenaline still running through her system. She wobbles to a fallen log and watches as he heads for a tree.

“Don’t do it,” she whispers. “Don’t…don’t leave it here. It feels wrong.”

He fixes her with a steady look, but walks away from the tree and comes to sit beside her, anyway.

“Besides, I like looking at it,” she adds weakly. Azazel nods, as if he understands, but Mary suspects he’s only doing it to placate her.

“We should head back to the cottage,” he says when she begins to shake. “It’s getting cold.”

“Let’s stay here a little while longer,” she tells him. “Just a little.”

He gently drapes his seal skin around her body before he wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close. Mary presses her cheek into the curve of his body and sighs when Azazel kisses the top of her head.

“A little longer,” he agrees.

.

The sun has fallen and the air is cold by the time they stagger from the woods. Shivering, Mary clutches Azazel’s seal skin tight around her body as he builds a fire and re-heats the soup from the night before. It is then Mary sees how differently he moves here, within the confines of a human house. Outside, his steps are sure and graceful, as if he is dancing with every motion. Now, inside these four walls, he walks like a child just learning how to balance. His steps become uneven, his hands shake, and he knocks into anything and everything.

Still, she remains silent and eats her soup. Once she is finished, Azazel simply stands and holds his hand out to her.

Trembling, Mary takes it and allows him to pull her out of her chair. His seal skin slides off her body and lands on the chair with a soft thump. She feels her heart begin to beat wildly in her chest in the same way it did in the woods.

Azazel lifts her into his arms without speaking, able to easily hold her weight. Mary nods in the direction of her bedroom, and does not fight it when her selkie presses his lips down onto hers and carries her down the hall. The bed is freshly made, snowy white linens bleached silver by the moonlight pouring in from the open window, soft and inviting.

He lays her on the bedspread and undresses to stand, naked, in the light of the moon. Mary undresses with shaking hands, gratefully breathing in the smell of the sea that filters through the open window. The smell grounds her, brings her back to the here and now as her oldest and most trusted friend covers her body with his own in her childhood bed and moves within her once again.

They move slowly this time. Skin slides against skin as they move together, Mary’s hands exploring every inch of Azazel that she can reach. The wind chimes outside of the window dance in the light breeze, sending soft music through her room that cannot quite drown out the noises the two of them make.

Afterward, Azazel nuzzles her golden hair away from her neck and gently bites the spot where it joins her shoulder, his too-sharp teeth drawing the barest hint of blood. Mary gasps into it, body arching upwards before he releases his grip and falls onto his side. He continues to stroke her arm, his fingers lightly brushing against her flesh until she shivers.

“I will stay,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to the marks left behind on her neck. “We’ll be happy.”

.

They don’t leave her bed much in the days that follow, emerging from their bubble only to gather food or for a quick wash before they fall beneath the covers to bring their bodies together again. They spend days doing nothing but kissing and talking and loving, and Mary forgets about the other skin sitting in her kitchen, forgets about John and the war and the world waiting just outside her door. Forgets that her lover will one day have to return to the sea.

She catches him looking at it, sometimes, gazing out her window with a look of sadness on his face. Catches him thinking about it in the way his body tenses when the smell of the salt air flows through her window and the gentle crashing of the waves echoes from the beach. When that happens, she rises and wraps her arms around him, feels his body relax back into hers and knows that she has found a way to keep him, at least for another day.

Then, one day, there comes a knock at the door.

Mary rises from the bed and dresses for the first time in days, slipping her nightgown over her head and pulling a robe over that. It’s too early for a regular visitor, too early for it to be one of the girls from town or a wandering merchant, and suddenly she feels fear settle in her belly. She’s had no word from John in months, but it could be him. He could be at her door, alive and well and smiling, and there is another man waiting for her in her bed.

Heart hammering in her chest and palms sweating from fear, she opens the door.

It isn’t John. Mary takes a deep breath, smiles at the mail carrier, and holds her hand out.

“Know it’s early, but I thought I’d surprise you,” the man says, smiling. “Good news, for once.”

Mary smiles back at him and takes the letter. The world seems to spin around her when she reads John’s neat handwriting on the front. Hands still shaking, she tears it open and drops the paper in surprise.

_The war is over,_ it reads. _I’m coming home._

Still, Mary thanks the mail carrier and slips back inside of her room. Her whole body begins to shake, and she feels tears well in her eyes when she looks at her selkie, peaceful in sleep and unaware of what’s happening in the waking world around him.

Slumping onto the bed, she buries her face in her hands and begins to cry softly. It’s over. Everything is over and John is coming home and she betrayed him, whispered words of love into the ear of another man, gave herself to another man in body and in heart and she can never undo it.

A gentle touch breaks her out of her thoughts. She turns to see Azazel rising, his hand sitting lightly on her shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” he asks softly.

“John is coming home,” she tells him, her voice flat. “The war’s over. We’ve won.”

Strangely, Azazel does not look concerned. Instead, he simply sits all the way up on the bed and takes her hands in his.

“Marry me,” he says.

“I can’t,” Mary sobs.

“You can,” he insists. “It’ll be like this always.”

“You’ll go back,” she says. “You’ll leave, and I won’t see you for seven years. I can’t live like that, Az. I can’t.”

“You won’t. Come with me,” he says. Mary follows Azazel into the kitchen and watches silently as he roots through her drawers, having become more and more comfortable in her house as the days went by. Finally, he finds a box of matches, hands it to her, and lifts his seal skin from the chair. He gives her a steady look and throws it into the cold hearth.

“What are you doing?” Mary whispers. “Az, what are you doing?”

“I told you once that a selkie needs their skin to return to the sea,” he explains gently. “If you burn this, I won’t be able to go back. I’ll be completely human. We could leave here, the two of us. Marry. Have children. Start a new life. Burn it, Mary.”

“I can’t,” she protests.

“You can,” Azazel insists. “You have to choose, Mary. I love you. You love me. Choose me. Burn it.”

“I can’t,” she repeats. She throws the matches away, watches as they hit the wall and fall to the floor. The box opens, scattering them across the wood. “I can’t do that to you. I see you staring out into the ocean. I heard you talk about it for years. You told me what your human father did to your mother. I could never do that to you.”

“I would be happy here, with you,” Azazel tells her. “I would not miss it, if we moved inland. I wouldn’t.”

“You would,” she says, voice breaking with fresh sobs. “You’d hate me. It isn’t my choice, Az. It’s yours. And neither chains of love nor chains of steel can keep a selkie from the sea. You told me that, once. I can’t make that choice for you. And I can’t keep you here with love.”

“So you choose him then,” Azazel says. His voice sounds cold, hollow, and already Mary can sense him pulling away from her. “You say you love me, and you still choose him.”

“It’s your choice,” Mary tells him. She crosses the room, picks up the matchbox, and finds one lonely match still nestled inside. She holds it out to him, her hand strangely steady. “I can’t take the sea from you.”

His shoulders slump, and Mary can see them trembling, and knows that she has lost him.

“I love you, Az,” she says softly. “But you don’t belong to me. The ocean holds your heart.”

Azazel sighs. “I wish you were a selkie maid.”

“I wish I was, too.” A fresh wave of tears comes to her eyes, and Mary tries frantically to blink them away, wanting to focus on his face.

Azazel steps forward then, and gently wipes away her tears. “I do love you, Mary Campbell.”

Then he is gone, leaving the door open behind him as he gathers his ash-stained skin from the hearth and vanishes onto the beach. Mary doesn’t follow. She slumps into her chair, numb, and runs her fingers over the rough surface of the matchbox until a stabbing pain in her abdomen forces her to rise.

She reaches between her legs and lets out a broken sob when she sees blood coating her fingers, not sure if she feels sadness or relief.

.

It’s summer when she sees him for the last time.

She’s older now, with slight lines around her mouth and eyes, years of laughter and sadness etched into her face. John and the boys are gone, leaving her at home while they fish, off for some male bonding time. She hasn’t told her husband about the blood she coughs up yet, or about how doing the simplest of tasks makes her tired beyond belief. She will tell him after, she vows, will give him one more happy, carefree weekend with their children before she tells him about her illness.

Despite her pain, she walks down to the beach like she does every day, her old seashell necklace heavy under her dress. A few of the shells are missing now, after so many years, and the remaining ones have been bleached nearly colorless by the sun. Still, she treasures it.

A strange feeling settles in her chest as she walks that day, different from the illness that grips her lungs, but still familiar in a far-off way. Almost unconsciously, she walks to the end of the beach to where the cliffs stretch high above the water. She can no longer swim as well now as when she was young, her illness having sapped her strength and stolen her breath, so she cannot reach the cave where she and Azazel spent countless hours talking about the mysteries of the ocean. Still, she sits on the beach and waits, and is not at all surprised when he walks out of the water, his skin sickly pale and his yellow eyes glowing.

The years have changed him as well. All of his hair is gone, and there are new wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, just as there are lines around hers. He’s thicker at the waist, but his arms and legs are skinner. There are new scars on his body, some white and faded, some angry and red, and he walks with a slight limp.

“You look cold,” he says, and drapes his skin across her shoulders. Mary runs her fingers over the damp fur and feels her body settle. The smell of the sea wraps itself around her, as comforting as the warm skin, and she takes a deep breath and feels whole and healthy for the first time in a long time.

She looks at him and smiles. “I knew you would come today. I just knew.”

“I wanted to see you,” he said. “I wondered…I wondered what had happened.”

“I married John,” she tells him. “We have two children. Sam and Dean. We named them for my parents.”

“I have another child as well,” Azazel informs her. “A daughter. Meg.”

Mary chuckles. “This one got a sea name. Different mother?”

Azazel nods. “Yes. She’s beautiful. She shed her skin for the first time last year. Scared me half to death when I couldn’t find her.”

“Children will do that,” Mary says. “I’m sorry, for what happened last time.”

Azazel shakes his head. “You were right. I couldn’t…I would’ve resented you. It was my choice. If I knew that you would still have me, I would burn my skin right now, on this beach, and run away with you. I’m ready now. But I took too long, I think.”

“We aren’t children anymore,” Mary says gently. “It’s too late now. And…I’m dying, Az.” As if on cue, she coughs, and when she pulls her hand away from her mouth, her fingers are bright red. “The doctor says I only have a few months left, at best. Something in my lungs.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“No. I had a good life, Az. I loved two good men, and had two beautiful boys. And I’m glad I got to see you before I went.” She strokes his skin again and sighs. “I’m glad that I’ll die so close to the ocean. I never would have been happy inland, either.”

“Let me stay until you pass,” he requests. “We’ll tell John. He’ll understand that we’re…old friends.”

She shakes her head. “No. I don’t want you to see me like that. I want the last time we see each other to be happy. Peaceful.”

“Whatever you want,” Azazel promises. He wraps an arm around her shoulders. Mary snuggles gratefully into his side, and feels her eyes grow heavy.

“I’m so tired,” Mary breathes.

“I’ll walk you home,” Azazel offers, and helps her to her feet. He holds her hand as they walk down the beach, and for a moment she feels like a teenager again, carefree as the waves wash up over her bare feet.

He opens her door and helps her into bed, gazing around with blatant curiosity at the toys and tools and clothes scattered around the house. But he does not comment, or ask her questions, knowing that there is no time.

Almost shyly she hands him back his skin, giving the fur a final, loving stroke as he takes it from her hands. Azazel gently drapes it at the foot of the bed and tucks her in, fluffing her pillow and pulling her blanket up to her shoulders.

She can feel sleep pulling at her, feel her body’s need to sink into unconsciousness and recover from the walk. “Goodbye, Az.”

“Goodbye, Mary,” he breathes. He leans down to kiss her, his lips still soft and impossibly cold against her own. As always, they taste like the sea, and it lingers on her skin when he pulls away. “Rest now. We’ll see each other again soon.”

“Stay until I fall asleep,” she requests. He nods and draws a chair closer to the bed. Weakly, she takes her hand out from under the covers and twines their fingers together, not caring that his touch is cold.

“Anything you want,” he promises.


End file.
